Reply to Found 9th grader has been copying math homework

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think this is a situation of "Don't ask, don't tell."  As long as my kid is getting good grades on the tests and understands the work, just don't get caught and don't flaunt it in front of me.[/quote]

Parent of a 10th grader here.

OP, are you really OK with posters telling you that this is fine, it's a case of "don't ask, don't tell," you should turn a blind eye, and it doesn't matter as long as your DD does fine on tests etc.?

Your DD is hurting herself. She may be doing fine on tests right now but eventually--if not in this class, in another one; if not this year, then next year-- the shirking of homework WILL catch up with her and she will see the grades start to slip because she didn't do any practice on her own, she only copied. Math is a muscle--you have to exercise it, especially as the subject gets harder over the year. She won't have the foundational knowledge to build on if she doesn't practice. That's what homework is: Practice. Boring, repetitive practice.

And OP, if you ignore the fact she is copying, you are tacitly condoning it. She knows[i] you[/i] know she is copying; if you do nothing, you are sending her the message that copying is fine with you.

So -- when she later copies passages from a book or a web site for an English essay or history paper; or when she looks over at someone's chemistry lab notes and copies during a lab; or when she copies homework that IS checked for accuracy and not just for completion -- YOU as the parent will have zero credibility if you try to say then that she should not have done that.

Sure, she can insist to you now that "I wouldn't do this on an essay or anything else, just on this time-wasting math homework that's not even checked. I'm not a cheater!" But she still knows that you saw she copied. If you do nothing, that makes it so much easier for her to fudge the issue when she sees someone else's answer at the next desk during a test, or when that passage she sees on some web site looks so right for her class project.

She needs a serious talking to about why even useless-seeming homework has a purpose and that just because her friends copy and let her copy too, that is not a reason for undermining herself in the long run. She's a freshman and, understandably, does not view things in the long run right now -- which is why you need to wake her up to the fact that this is something you are stopping. Look at the good idea that one PP suggested and have her do this homework in plain sight on the day it's assigned, before others have done it. Is she copying off friends who have the class a day earlier than she does? (That happens, in high school block scheduling.) That's a reason to see her doing it on the blank page with nothing else to help her.

If she complains, "You don't trust me," as kids this age do -- I know -- then you get to reply, "I trusted you until you copied, and now you get to earn trust back by doing your job and not letting others do it for you."

OP, bear in mind that when she gets to college, if she's used to taking the easy way out when it comes to the boring, ungraded stuff, she will be utterly slammed when test time comes. And if she cheats -- well, my friend who's a college professor says that honor code discipline is much, much tougher than it used to be.

Yeah, that's extrapolating a long way into the future for a high school freshman, but you have to think about whether you as the parent are going to let her start high school like this. She will continue in the way she begins, and if she begins with an attitude of "it doesn't matter and everyone copies," then YOU lose any ability to say, "You should not do what 'everyone' does."

The DCUM "I did it and was fine" crowd will tell you otherwise. Are you going to do what you know you need to do, and nip this right now, or are you going to let her buy into that belief that "It's only busywork so I can lie about whether I did it myself; only grades matter"? [/quote]

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